A Review of Conventional versus Additive Manufacturing for Metals: Life-Cycle Environmental and Economic Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

My general evaluation for the article titled “A review of conventional versus additive manufacturing for metals: Life-cycle environmental and economic analysis” is as follows. It is believed that the following corrections will be beneficial for the strengthening of the article.

 

1.      The abstract must be make strong. Abstract should be reviewed again. Some of the numerical data can be written in this section.

2.      The introduction should be revised. The number of resources here seems insufficient. More and updated resources should be added.

3.      It has been a comprehensive study in the literature in recent years. If there are more current literature studies, these should be examined in detail and added to the literature section. It is a suggestion for the literature part of the article to be more comprehensive. It may be useful to include relevant articles in 2020-2023 in references.

4.      Up-to-date reference can be added including the following related papers.

a.       Gouveia, J. R., Pinto, S. M., Campos, S., Matos, J. R., Sobral, J., Esteves, S., & Oliveira, L. (2022). Life cycle assessment and cost analysis of additive manufacturing repair processes in the mold industry. Sustainability, 14(4), 2105.

b.      Ulkir, O. (2023). Energy-Consumption-Based Life Cycle Assessment of Additive-Manufactured Product with Different Types of Materials. Polymers, 15(6), 1466.

c.       Výtisk, J., Honus, S., Kočí, V., Pagáč, M., Hajnyš, J., Vujanovic, M., & Vrtek, M. (2022). Comparative study by life cycle assessment of an air ejector and orifice plate for experimental measuring stand manufactured by conventional manufacturing and additive manufacturing. Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 32, e00431.

5.      The text of the images in Section 3 should be larger.

 

6.      The authors should compare the results of their method with those of previous studies. Authors can do compare table (A new table can add about previous studies to result section). 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Thank you very much for the comments and for the revision of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This work provides an overview of the environmental and economic impacts of CNC machining of DMLS and 316l stainless steel 782 components through LCA and LCC methods. The work is informative and logically structured and is recommended to be accepted for publication in its current form.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the comments and for the revision of the manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

A very interesting paper. I myself have been in additive manufacturing for more than 20 years and cost relation of AM compared with conventional machining has always been a hot topic. Also, recently the environmental aspect has become very important. I find your paper a nice research in both of this fields. I also like, that you have taken into account the costs/environmental effect of producing a raw material for both technologies. This is often neglected in other scientific literature in this field. I think that your paper will be an interesting read for a wide array of scientists from production engineering to environmentalists. Therefore, I recommend your paper for publication in its current form.      

Author Response

Thank you very much for the comments and for the revision of the manuscript.